


that which we wait for

by doofusface



Series: swingin' feelin' [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, Slow Burn, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 06:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13898652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doofusface/pseuds/doofusface
Summary: He really didn’t think he would die from an evil scientist who was also a sea creature enthusiast, but here he was.Dying.From an evil scientist.Who is also a sea creature enthusiast.Whattawaytago.





	that which we wait for

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh tw almost? death? or is that a squick im not sure. could be both.
> 
> part 3 of a loosely set series; you can mostly read this as a standalone but again, more out of it if you get to the previous ones

Peter sees the swinging metal come at him again, and two more after. He dodges, but they ram into the building behind him, and rubble manages to slam right where the back of his head meets his neck, making him topple off the 64th floor of a midtown building.

“ _Dude, you okay?!_ ” he hears Ned half-yell into the comms. Everything’s spinning, and it feels like his brain just _sloosh_ ed inside his skull, and he doesn’t like it. He kinda wants to puke, really, and the whole falling thing isn’t helping.

Oh. Wait. He’s falling.

Ned’s going full yell now. “ _Peter, are you awake? Peter?_ ”

Peter thinks he shouldn’t be crying right now, but his brain feels very weird.

He’s starting to regret not reinstalling the parachute. Tony might take his suit back for this. Reckless and irresponsible teenager-ing. Man, the wind sure is picking up.

Ned’s still yelling but he’s really out of it, so all he does is squint and unsquint, trying to make out the words. “ _—there!_ ” Ned cheers, and suddenly the air is moving past him in a different way, and by the time he blinks back to earth he realizes he’s on the side of a short apartment building.

“What happened?” he asks hazily.

Ned makes noncommittal sounds, so Karen fills him in. “ _You have a concussion from falling debris._ ”

“Oh. Great.” Peter rubs the back of his neck, stretching. He can hear Doc Ock a few blocks away now. “So, uh, did Tony get back to us, or?”

“ _The Avengers are not available at this time.”_

“Yup, figured. Hey, Evil Inspector Gadget!” Peter yells as the good doctor rounds the block. “Catch me if you can!”

Peter quickly finds out that, he in fact, can. He gets a couple blocks down before a heavy, sturdy robot arm/leg/thing crushes him from behind, and into the dark pavement below. He hears something _crack_ , but with all the pain he’s currently in, he can’t tell up from down.

Worse? His (unsanctioned) comms for Ned went down when he did, and he can’t get his Guy in the Chair on the line.

He really didn’t think he would die from an evil scientist who was also a sea creature enthusiast, but here he was.

Dying.

From an evil scientist.

Who is also a sea creature enthusiast.

Whattawaytago.

Truth be told, Peter had been getting used to the near-death experiences every other week for the past two years, but this new guy was smarter than Toomes by _far_ , and somehow more terrifying than Thanos, if only for his straight-up methodical precision. He’s kind of scared.

Peter was starting to get really friendly with the broken pavement currently causing his blood to trickle. Or pool? He wasn’t sure, what with the metal extremity digging him deeper into the ground every millisecond.

Welp. It was a good two years. May’s probably gonna kill Tony, though.

He should be freaking out more, but _dang_ , his head hurts. Why can’t his healing speed up a bit?

The tutoring center across from him catches his eye, and he winces. He can hear the helicopters above with, presumably, the news crews. He wants to yell for them to leave, because he _really_ doesn’t want _them_ to see it on the news.

Much less _her_.

“Karen—call emergency contacts,” he manages to choke out, sputtering dirt and saliva and possibly blood. Oh, wait, no— _definitely_ blood.

Ned picks up immediately. “ _Bro, are you okay?!_ ”

“ _Peter, what’s wrong, sweetie?_ ” comes May’s worried voice almost simultaneously.

Ock is putting pressure on the leg pinning him, but also slightly distracted by the S.W.A.T. teams closing in. Peter’s just glad he has time to say goodbye.

“Didn’t want—you to see—on the news,” he says painfully, grinding his teeth as he makes a last ditch effort to get out of the clamped metal. Then he realizes there’s still a number ringing. “Wait, where’s MJ?”

The ringing continues, going unanswered. Karen’s mechanical voice replies: “ _MJ is currently unavailable. Trying again._ ”

“ _She might be at her interview,_ ” Ned supplies. He’s trying to keep his voice even for Peter’s sake, but it doesn’t do much.

Her interview.

At Harvard.

“ _I can try to—_ ” May starts, but Peter makes a gruff sound and she switches to concern. “ _Peter, you’re going to be okay, hon. Okay? You’re gonna be okay._ ”

_She’s not going to pick up. She’s going to see this on the news. She’s going to try to revive me just to kill me again._

“I love you guys,” he says simply. “I— _guh_ —I really, I love you— _nghh_!”

The world goes dark.

* * *

Michelle Jones is confident about her Harvard application. She is confident because she is rational, and being rational means she is fairly objective, and being fairly objective means she knows she’s got the best possible college app ready for this rich kid-filled school.

Also because she needs to be close enough to walk (two miles is _nothing_ to a New Yorker) over to her two boys at MIT, just to harass them during finals. For fun.

So when she aces her interview (objectively), she’s all too ready to go call the nerd-losers (objective AND subjective) she has chosen as her friends to rub it in their faces in the most monotonous voice she can muster. She boots up her phone to find alerts all over social media about Spider-Man and a new supervillain, which, really, not surprising. New York is a hub of angry people, and it happens like, almost everyday.

Except she also has a bunch of missed calls from Ned. And May.

And Peter.

Peter has only called her once before—when Thanos was getting ready to level the city, and Petey-boy couldn’t reach his aunt or Ned to…

“...say his goodbyes,” she breathes, and then hushes herself, because this is _not happening_.

 _Not today_.

Today was _her_ day, Peter, how _dare_ you try and die _today_.

There’s a recorded message left for her and she listens to it as her body goes on autopilot, scrambling to find a taxi or bus or _anything_ to somehow get to New York in time.

It’s Peter’s voice, sort of, but he sounds like he’s trying really hard to get _any_ sound out. She realizes he probably didn’t know it was recording the voicemail, because she can hear Ned and May trying to console him, trying to think of a way to get in touch with her.

She hears him choke out that he loves them, all of them, and she’s salty.

Because she was supposed to say it first.

Because it wasn’t supposed to be today.

Michelle calls Ned when the voicemail ends. “Where is he?” she demands. She didn’t check Twitter. He wouldn’t want her to see it on a zoomed in press photo, too high off the ground to really tell.

“ _He’s—I don’t know, MJ. Some of the Avengers swooped in from nowhere, and I can’t get his suit to respond—“_

“I’m on my way. Quit messing with the suit. May needs you more.” Keep it rational. Keep it simple.

That way, you don’t worry.

You do the much more unhealthy alternative of bottling it up inside until someone (preferably the object of your worry) gives you an excuse “ _to not be okay for once, MJ, I won’t judge. I’m here for you._ ”

She really hopes he’s okay.

* * *

Ned gets a call from Tony twenty minutes after Michelle hangs up.

Or, technically, _May_ does, but since she’s currently in a state of shock on the Parker apartment couch, he picks it up.

“Hello?”

“ _He’s okay, we’ve got everyo—wait, who is this?_ ”

“Ned,” he says dumbly, because 1) it’s Tony Stark and 2) he’s registering what the billionaire has just said. “He’s okay?”

“ _Oh, Guy-in-the-Chair._ ” Ned forgot Peter had told Tony about his Spidey-Squad. And also that the name’s a work in progress. “ _Yeah. He’s—well, ‘okay’ might be a stretch, but he’s at least whole. Likely to survive, if this new med suit is functioning properly, which I’m sure it is, because Shuri built it._ ”

“Can we see him?” Ned asks, and he sees May snap out from her reverie for a brief moment.

“He’s alive?” she asks quietly. Hopefully.

Ned switches the phone to speaker mode. “ _We’re still en-route to the upstate facility, but I’ll send Happy to pick you three up._ ”

May wrings her hands nervously then starts packing some of Peter’s stuff to bring upstate, like it’s a nervous tick and she can’t help it. Ned just winces when Tony says the word “three”.

“MJ’s still at Harvard.”

“ _Oh_. _Two, then._ ” Ned hears him yell something to another person, along the lines of, “Massachusetts pickup”, and hears a distant sound of affirmation. “ _We’ll get her over. She still got that scowl that melts steel?_ ”

“Yup,” Ned replies, happy for the change of mood.

“ _Good. Time to see if Vision’s new upgrade works._ ”

 _Click_.

Peter’s fine.

Ish.

Alive, though.

He’ll take what he can get.

* * *

Michelle gets picked up by Vision around the corner from Quincy House. She doesn’t really care that she’ll be seen, but the fact that her legs pretty much give out on her might help make it look like a damsel in distress scenario, even if she hates those. Though, to be fair, it wouldn’t be _wrong_.

Ned called her immediately after finding out to tell her where to meet her pickup, and she and Vision don’t speak a word to each other when they catch each other's eyes. Vision flies her to the nearest secure helipad, and they board another one of Tony’s jets. She sinks into a plush seat, tired and hyper aware of how nice the interior looks.

How empty.

She sinks further, mentally rehearsing just how hard she’s going to yell at Peter when he wakes up.

Because he _will_ wake up.

And now he’s dead meat.

* * *

Ned’s pretty sure the Avenger’s facility is super cool, but kind of extra, and he loves it.

He _doesn’t_ love that when he gets there he overhears Tony telling Pepper something about “a few minutes” and “legally dead” and “benching the kid when he wakes up”.

“He _what_?” May yells beside him, clutching a duffel bag full of clothes. She must’ve heard it, too.

Tony spins, and regrets leaving the safe confines of his mother’s womb. May Parker looks and emanates murder, and Ned’s sure no one would dare interfere with everything that just went down. “You said he was okay!”

“He was!” Tony backpedals, and suddenly Pepper is gone, leaving her husband high and dry. Tony curses under his breath. “He _is._ There may have been a few minutes before we got there and before the med suit stabilized him where his heart _may have_ stopped, but he _is_ okay.”

May softens, but she’s still in full mom-fury mode.

“Can we see him?” Ned hears himself say.

Tony nods solemnly. “Follow me.”

* * *

Ned drags Michelle to the med bay when she arrives, pale and feeling sick about _something._

He’s never seen her this worried about Peter, and it’s scary.

_“How come you never, like, freak out about this stuff?” Peter’s on the news, bloody and limping. Tomorrow he’ll only have scratches, but tonight’s going to be them sleeping over and nursing the physics genius._

_“Ned,” she says with fierce eyes and an odd, calm voice. She’s hunched over with her nose in a book, as if nothing’s happening. “You can’t snuff out a light like Peter. He’s like the freakin’ sun. You’d need like, a million lions or something.”_

_“...So you’re still totally in love with him.”_

_“Shut up, or I’m hacking your phone and texting Betty with it.”_

Michelle’s the anchor in their group. She keeps them grounded, keeps them from trying something unnecessarily stupid and dangerous. Keeps them second-guessing everything she says, because she still likes to mess with them for fun.

Ned’s not second-guessing anything right now.

He sees fear, and she’s not trying to hide a shred of it.

* * *

“Ned?”

It’s the first time Michelle speaks in the last five hours, and it comes out broken and dry. She thinks she’s crying, but she also can’t feel her face, so who knows?

Ned blinks, wrenching his eyes away from his best friend’s still body. “Yeah?”

He sounds just as bad. His eyes look red from dryness, refusing to let up his relentless watching of Peter’s monitors.

(Every number’s been steady except for a couple hours ago, where something dropped to fast and too low, and they were all dragged outside while medical professionals attended to the broken boy.)

Michelle huffs lightly, one side of her lips quirking up. “This is the most quiet I’ve had ever since you two took me hostage.”

Ned snorts involuntarily, but he looks grateful for the attempt. He turns to the long couch right outside the room. May’s asleep, emotional exhaustion finally taking its toll.

...Or Black Widow’s special Sleepy Time serum, but if no one asks, no one tells.

“She wanted to call you,” he says.

Michelle follows his gaze. May shuffles around in her sleep, arm dropping off the edge of the couch. “When?”

“Right before,” he says. The skin by his eyes wrinkle, and he smiles a bit. “I kinda wish you heard what he said—it sounded like he was talking to you more than to us.”

 _I did_ , she thinks.

“I did,” she says.

Ned clicks back to her. “What? _How_?”

“I guess Karen let the voicemail recording through,” Michelle replies, her voice fuller. She was definitely crying, she concludes. The drops under her didn’t come from rain.

“ _Man_ ,” Ned laughs. “I can _not_ believe I wasn’t there to witness True Love’s Near Death Confession. I invested _so much_ , too.”

Michelle snorts, laughter bubbling up inside. She wants to throw something at Ned, but there’s only one pillow (she’s hugging it), and Peter’s IVs could get caught in the crossfire. She settles for a friendly glare, reserved for the people she’s planning to annoy all through college. “ _Loser_ ,” she laughs. “That’s not what he meant and you know it.”

Ned goes quiet.

The next time he speaks, he sounds so far away that Michelle’s not sure if he knows how heavy it drops on her:

“C’mon, MJ. It’s not a secret.”

* * *

Turns out, an eighteen-year-old with accelerated healing plus some hand-me-down Wakandan tech can fix seven broken ribs and a fractured spine in about 22 hours.

Ned knows this because he’s been obsessively clocking data since hour twelve; there’s a six pack of 5-hour Energy’s by his feet to keep him awake, and if all else fails, Michelle’s already promised to throw a book at him.

(She was knocked out on the bed next to Peter’s when he started, hand outreached and clasped to her “not boyfriend”. Ned’s 95% sure she’s going to kill him when she sees the video he took, and takes precautions to ensure he will _always_ have a backup copy.)

Peter groans. Loudly.

Ned falls onto the floor, not noticing how far forward he’d been leaning off his seat. “Peter?” he asks from the Land of the White Tiles. “You awake, dude?”

 _Groaaaaan_.

Ned peeks from the side of his bed, eyes landing on his friend’s oxygen mask forming fog. “Is that a yes?”

Peter turns his head in slow-mo, the subsiding facial injuries preventing him from giving a full glare.

“Dude!” Ned _whoop’_ s, guiding Peter’s free hand into a slow rendition of their handshake.

Peter smiles, tilting his body in Ned’s direction, then finds it anchored somewhere. Ned watches him follow the line of his arm, tugging him back to the now-awake Michelle. Peter blinks.

“I’ll go get May,” Ned says, patting his buddy’s other arm. “You guys should do that thing you hate doing—y’know, talking about your feelings?”

He’s out the door before Michelle can throw a pillow, but that doesn’t stop her from throwing The Bird.

* * *

“Peter.”

A nod.

“I’m going to kick your sorry ass all the way to Staten Island for this.”

Peter squeezes her hand.

Michelle gets up and leans over him, her free hand fixing his hair absentmindedly. “But.”

He raises a brow.

She smiles softly. “I won’t leave you there,” she whispers, kissing his forehead. “I love you too much.”

* * *

Ned doesn’t tell them about the cameras in the med bay.

Tony doesn’t tell them he keeps the video.

May doesn’t tell them she gets a copy.

**Author's Note:**

> drags shuri into the super teenage nerds circle as slowly as possible
> 
> also yo ive had that kind of hit with a soccer ball and LEMME TELL YA it was WEIRD and it SUCKED
> 
> fun fact i dont know a single new yorker who actually like staten island enough to say "hey! let's go to staten!" including my friends who live there
> 
> hmu on tumblr: doofwrites


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